"More is more and less is a bore"

I've been catching up on my blog reading this eve and came across this little beauty, well worth four minutes of your time. From Advanced Style which is one of my favourite blogs, Iris Apfel is AMAZING, and when she starts making odd shoes dance half way through this film she rose even higher up the amazingness scale.
And yes, there is a scale.


"More is more and less is a bore" I totally agree Iris.










P.S Sorry for the lack of posts for nearly two months, I have been slaving my way through a TEFL course but have now finished woo!

Am now working on the idea 'boredom breeds creativity' which is conveniently just in time for Christmas...

New Flat

So I have got to a state of being relatively organised in my new flat now.... Well as organised as I can be considering I am waiting for the bedroom to be finished so am currently bedrooming in the study. And the study is half in the living room, and the other half is still in the parents house...
You get the gist.

So here are a few pictures of the bits that are kind of sorted. This might not be their final resting place, but for now, it'll do.

Animal Skirt

Thanks to the lovely Katy, of Caught up in Cake fame, I am featured in this weeks "Here's How We Wear" post. She does one of these every Friday and invites other bloggers to join in with a certain theme. This week it's a vintage piece so I picked a skirt, which is actually one of my favourite items of clothing. Ever.

I bought the skirt in Beyond Retro about 2 years ago, I remember spending ages with my sister deciding whether to get it or not as it was massive, thankfully I had faith in my sewing skills (with a bit of help from my mum!) and went for it. I've never looked back, after all, how often is it you see a skirt with a dinosaur, a dodo and a walrus on it! The jacket is from H&M and the top is from the Most Marvelous place to shop in Northampton, a new(ish) vintage emporium. The shoes I bought in a charity shop in Melbourne and I affectionately refer to them as my geography teacher shoes.

I clearly need to get on the whole outfit post thing as I have a huge amount of clothes... not so sure about being in the photos but I'll get over it. Either that or I'll dress my mannequin up and take photos of her instead. She's currently wearing a flat cap and a fur stole. She needs a name too but after 5 years of being together I am yet to think of a suitable one, her friend is called Grenville, I'm going to have to think of one soon or she'll feel left out and might try and murder me in my sleep.

Birthday Treats

Last weekend I turned the ripe-old age of 26. I must say I quite like getting older, I act like a bit of a granny most of the time anyway so it seems to suit me. And the fact that I look about 18 still so I enjoy seeing the look of shock on people's faces when they find out my age...

Here's a few of my birthday treats

 TWO birthday cakes at work!

 Favourite roast Lamb

 wooo!

 Surprise work present(that I've had my eye on for the past two weeks!)

 Tracey Emin poster from lovely sister

 Vintage birthday card also from lovely sister

On the whole, Birthdays are fun. Nice to be at home too as I was in Australia this time last year. Now I'm looking forward to the festivities of cold Christmas (Hot Christmas was just TOO weird!)

Vintage Rally and Steam Fair

Many of you may not be aware of this but I am actually a massive geek...

On Sunday I fueled my geekness by visiting the Kettering Vintage Rally and Steam fair. So you're probably wondering what the hell I was geeking over. Traction Engines. Yep, that is steam engines. Not trains, I don't like trains, just traction engines, or steam rollers. I am aware this is a little strange but I love them! I've been slightly obsessed with them ever since I was small, I'm not really sure why but it seems to have stuck. So on Sunday I dragged my family along (they're used to my obsession by now you see so don't mind accompanying me!)

It was actually a really good fair, there were loads of antique stalls full of interesting old bits to poke around at, and there were loads of vintage cars and vans which were really cool. Whenever I go to one of these things it makes me want to swap my car for a cool old one. Like a Cadillac or something. I saw two of the best camper vans I've ever seen. Since buying a van in Australia with my friends and driving around in it, I can't wait to get another one, ours was an old Toyota Hiace with a pop up roof, but it died in Litchfield National Park on a big hill... One of these two would definitely be a suitable replacement!

I probably wouldn't paint it pink, but that's easily rectifiable!






Here are some more pictures of the things that caught the attention of my eyeballs on the day....

 He looks like a character from a Disney film

My Pappy had a bike like this when he delivered vegetables

 Hello!

 Mr Peanut.

 I think I would suit a little car like this

 They're friends

 For those of you that may not know, this is a Traction Engine! I am determined to own one, and have a boiler suit with my name on the back for when I drive it. I am being perfectly serious when I say this (I was telling my friend the other day and she thought I was joking...) Although again I wouldn't paint mine red, maybe maroon, or navy.

 This is a scale model of one, its a couple of meters long, This might have to be my starting point...

If anyone is interested in Visiting Kettering Vintage Rally and Steam Fair check out their website. Its well worth a visit (you don't have to be a traction engine geek like me) there is loads going on, especially if you like vintage/antique house wares or general bric a brac and you don't mind rooting thorough some boxes of rusty bits.

I bought these few things, for a grand total of three pounds, which now have a lovely new home in my flat.

Cake Date

Last night was the night of the CAKE DATE with my dear friend Katy and lovely cakes from Ladyofvintage.

OH MY GOD they were so good.

My food baby (affectionately named Janet) was massive. We had a lovely array of baked goods, including banana bread, cupcakes, cake pops and cookies, amongst other things. Hence Janet gaining about 5 pounds in one sitting. She even sent a special 'man cupcake' for Katy's other half so he didn't feel left out. We had homemade pink lemonade to wash it all down, and Katy being the lovely host that she is even made me a pot of tea! So basically it was a pretty good evening on the whole. 

I did however decide against wearing my high-waisted jeans to work today..... So worth it though.

The cupcakes were wedding themed, featuring purple roses and bows on top of while icing with pink details, they were beautiful. The man cake was blue with stars and an Oreo on top which is pretty damn cool too. We has a selection of vanilla and chocolate cake pops, I think these were my favourite. Also as they're completely covered in chocolate they last longer than a normal cupcake so are great for a gift or if you need to prepare in advance for an event.

I might have gone a bit overboard on the pictures but it was very exciting!

 

YUM

Favourite

Just found this image from a Google search for Pinteresting... Tracey Emin is one of my favourite artists, I even wrote my dissertation on her work for my degree. I have never seen this one before and I think its one of my new favourites.

Tim Walker & Tim Burton

Tim Walker and Tim Burton, two of my favourite people, did a photo shoot prior to Burton's Retrospective in New York and because I was travelling I missed it! I didn't even realise it had happened. But never mind, I have since found the images on the Harpers Bazaar Website to drool over instead, here is a few of my favourites:

As you might have noticed I especially like the ones with the giant skeletons... If you want to check out the whole article it's here thanks to Harpers Bazaar.

Tim Walker also has an exhibition coming up at Somerset House in October - Tim Walker : Story Teller which I am pretty excited about, I saw a show of his work a few years ago at the Design Musem which was amazing. His photos are so different to anyone else, I love the way he plays with proportion and he's really clever with colour, and I don't just mean the images he colours afterwards technicolour stylee! I would love to have a massive print of any of these on my wall.

Mannequins Galore

These are some photos I took whilst I was living in Brunswick, Melbourne. This shop was just down the road from me and I was mildly fascinated with it for a little while. Partly due to the fact I really like mannequins but also because it just seemed so weird.

There are just a few things I'd like to point out:
1. Look at the sunshine, I do miss the Australian sunshine. This wasn't even a super hot day.
2. These photos do not convey the creepiness of this shop. It was so creepy. It was hardly ever open and was literally FULL of mannequins. Like so full you could hardly walk through the shop. This is coming from a person who quite likes mannequins ( I have two in my flat).
3. Such a weird name for a mannequin shop 'Mannequins Galore' even that's creepy.

There are probably more things I could tell you about this shop but this will do for now.